Thursday, August 22, 2013

Michael Sean Winters for NCR Today: Let's Celebrate Joyful, Female Noise!




Is this Michael Sean Winters's response to Sara_TMS_again when she wrote in a comment at National Catholic Reporter yesterday,

We also want men--including John Allen, Michael Sean Winters and many of the other men who write for the NCR--to realise that there is a problem with the role of women in the Church today, and to stop ignoring and belittling it in their writings. 

I'm inclined to think that Winters's article today entitled "A Joyful, Female Noise" actually is in some way a response to Sara_TMS_again. If so, it's gobsmackingly clueless, with its fulsome praise of women who put ornamental flourishes on the lives of the men*--like Winters himself--who imagine that they have every right to keep occupying center stage in the Catholic drama.

While women create beautiful "female noise" in the background to help their men preen and shine.

*And I'm not arguing that this is who Mary Beth Bennett is, or how she views her work as a musician. I'm pointing out that it's how Winters presents her.

Addendum, later in the day: Sara_TMS_again appears not to agree with my reading of Winters's piece.

The graphic: I find the quote at many websites, most of them offering "biblical" advice to women about their role in the divine scheme of things, but I don't find any clear indicator of its original source.

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